


to be loved (and to be in love)

by taizi



Series: spring doves [5]
Category: Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson
Genre: Childhood Friends, Dancing, Growing Up Together, Idiots in Love, M/M, Pining, i wrote this on my phone. i have a problem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 00:26:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18884389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: “So it wasn’t true then? What you said before?”Snufkin blinks slowly at him. Moomin clarifies, “You told them you were spoken for.”“Oh, yes. That’s true.”Heartbreak is a physical thing, as it turns out. Moomin didn’t know that until now, looking at his best friend and great love and feeling like his whole chest is going to come apart.“Oh,” he says. “I’m happy for you, Snufkin.”





	to be loved (and to be in love)

**Author's Note:**

> i have loved you since we were eighteen  
> long before we both thought the same thing  
> [to be loved and to be in love](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VRpzJabYlQQ)

It happens at one of Papa’s parties.

Snufkin is playing with the ramshackle band, leading their flutes and violins with his harmonica. His face is flushed, hair in disarray, and Moomin has caught himself staring more than once.

It’s just that it’s very easy to get lost in looking at him! Moomin will notice his freckles or a leaf in his fur and then goes on noticing things about him worth attention, until quite suddenly whole minutes have passed and Snufkin is giving him a funny look back and asking if there’s a hole in his smock.

There is, there always is, but Moomin wouldn’t be so fascinated by a hole in his smock.

“I’m in a puzzle,” he admits to Sniff, catching his little brother in the act of stealing sweets off My’s plate. “I want to go on listening to him play, at the same time I’d really like a dance with him. What to do!”

Sniff looks as though he’d rather talk about anything else, but gamely replies, “He’ll hop down soon enough for a drink. Just catch him before he crawls up a tree and ignores us for the rest of the night.”

Little My notices the theft of her sweets at that point and shrieks a war cry. Moomin removes himself from the scene swiftly and deftly. Mama can sense trouble like a bird can sense rain and he doesn’t want to be scolded along with his adopted siblings.

He finds Snorkmaiden taking a break and joins her. She beams at him as he sits in the grass beside her log and says, “I’ve not seen hide nor hair of you all night! Where have you been lurking?”

“By the band,” he admits. “I must tell you about my puzzle.”

She looks commiserating when he’s finished, giving a little nod. Moomin can always count on her to understand him.

“Oh! Here he comes now,” Snorkmaiden says, glancing over Moomin’s head. “It’s your chance.”

He turns, and sure enough, Snufkin is hopping down from his perch, harmonica stuffed into a pocket. He weaves unerringly through the crowd toward them, and Moomin is filled with a strange sense of pride that he passes so many other people without pause to greet the two of them with a smile.

Snorkmaiden pats the spot beside her on the mossy log, and Snufkin takes it without fuss. Moomin scoots across the grass once Snufkin is settled and leans back against his legs.

At once, he feels Snufkin tug gently on his left ear, and it’s as good as any warm greeting.

Papa’s parties are always a grand thing, attracting guests for miles, and sometimes one or two new faces will show up alongside friends and neighbors. Between the bonfire, and the carrying scent of food, and the handful of musicians in steady swing, it’s a simple matter for any stranger to make their way through the valley and join the merry-making. 

Snufkin has barely been sitting down for five minutes when one such stranger approaches. They’re a tall creature, with narrow eyes and feathered ears and a long, handsome face.

“You play wonderfully,” the stranger says, looking enraptured. “I’ve never heard that song before.”

“It was one of mine, from a few years ago,” Snufkin replies easily. He’s in an agreeable mood tonight. “I never did name it.”

Moomin isn’t quite rude enough to interrupt, even though there’s about a dozen things he’s come up with to talk to Snufkin about in the half hour since they last spoke. And he still has to ask for a dance before Snufkin changes his mind about being at the party, the way he tends to when such things drag on. Moomin tries not to fidget while the stranger praises Snufkin’s talent with composition, going on at length about the catchy melody and how his eyes shone in the dark and what a striking figure he made, perched at the top of his weathered stump, head and shoulders above the bigger and taller musicians. 

Snufkin is talented, and he is striking— all of that is common sense. But a visitor couldn’t be expected to know that right away. So Moomin attempts patience, tilting his head so that his chin is propped on one of Snufkin’s knees.

From there Moomin has a clear view of Snorkmaiden, and he blinks in surprise. His pleasant friend is wearing a distinctly unpleasant look on her face. She almost seems offended, and Moomin is about to ask what’s wrong when the stranger says, “Forgive me if this is too forward, but would you care to dance?”

They hold out a hand to Snufkin, the way Papa will sometimes hold out a hand to Mama before he leads her in a dance, and Moomin thinks, Oh.

 _Oh_.

And his insides turn to ice.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a small voice cries out _Unfair!_ He was going to ask for a dance, he’d been thinking about it all night long!

“I’m afraid I’m spoken for,” Snufkin replies without missing a beat. “But you might find someone else here who’d be happy to dance with you. Why don’t you stay awhile?”

The stranger is plainly disappointed, but they take it in stride. After a round of good-natured farewells, they amble off to another corner of the party, and Moomin has never been more relieved to see the back of someone in his life.

Snorkmaiden huffs, “What nerve! And to ask you right in front of—“

“Well, they could hardly know better,” Snufkin says quickly, rummaging his harmonica out of his pocket. He taps it twice on the palm of his hand, nervously. “I feel like playing again, Moomintroll. Let me up?”

“Oh— yes, of course,” Moomin says, scrambling out of the way. “What song will you play?”

“One you know,” comes the teasing reply, and then Snufkin is climbing back up the dead tree that serves as his stage for the evening, his fellow musicians clamoring when they realize he’s returned.

He sets the note, and begins to play, and Moomin recognizes _All Small Beasts Should Have Bows In Their Tails_ within the first few chords. It fills him with something impossibly warm, something that pushes aside that unhappy surprise from moments ago with firm hands.

Sometimes, one has to just— sit quietly. And marvel at how much one loves their best friend.

Snorkmaiden sinks from the log to the grass beside Moomin. She takes one of his hands.

“What are you thinking about?” she asks.

Moomin doesn’t tear his eyes away from the band for a moment and answers her honestly. She laughs brightly, unsurprised. The question was probably just a joke to begin with.

The answer is usually Snufkin.

“What do you think he meant, Snorkmaiden? About being spoken for?”

“Oh, dear, don’t ask me.” She gives his hand a pat. “That Snufkin will tell you himself, he tells you everything else. He’ll get bothered by all this attention soon enough and slink off to some secret place to be alone, so you can ask him then.”

Moomin has to smile at both Sniff and Snorkmaiden knowing Snufkin so well. They’re right, too, because not even twenty minutes later the mumrik has made his clever escape, and Moomin leaves the swell of light and music and merry-making to follow him into the nearby grove of trees.

It’s an easy matter for Moomin to find him where he’s sitting by the peaceful brook. He makes a pretty picture there, autumn-colored creature that he is.

“I don’t know that I’m cut out for parties,” Snufkin says when he sees Moomin coming. The look on his face is just shy of apologetic, because this is simply how he is and they both know it’s nothing to apologize for.

“You lasted nearly half the evening! I think the trick is to stick you in the band so you forget the crowd.”

Snufkin laughs and it’s very much a gilded accomplishment as far as Moomin is concerned. They sit together comfortably, the space between them a familiar shape after all these years.

“Something on your mind?” Snufkin asks, always guessing these things rightly.

“I’m a little cross with that stranger,” Moomin admits. “I was preoccupied all night with how I might convince you to dance and they stole the question from me just like that, as easy as anything!”

“Oh, Moomintroll, you only had to ask. I’d hardly want to dance with someone I don’t know, but I know you better than anyone.”

Simultaneously pleased by the sentiment, and disappointed he wasted time dithering for no reason, Moomin asks, “So it wasn’t true then? What you said before?”

Snufkin blinks slowly at him. Moomin clarifies, “You told them you were spoken for.”

“Oh, yes. That’s true.”

Heartbreak is a physical thing, as it turns out. Moomin didn’t know that until now, looking at his best friend and great love and feeling like his whole chest is going to come apart.

“Oh,” he says. “I’m happy for you, Snufkin.”

“Don’t be too happy for me. It’s terribly one-sided.”

He might as well have tipped the world upside down, as calmly as you please, and Moomin has to really think for a moment to make sure he heard right.

Then he blurts, “You can’t be serious, Snuf, how could it ever be?”

Snufkin laughs again, richly amused, and tells him, “Moomin, I’ve very few redeeming qualities. I’m a tramp who refuses to be tied down to one person or place, who can’t abide crowds or too much noise or sleeping indoors for more than a night or two at a time. I can play a pretty tune, but only barely hold a conversation with anyone that isn’t you or your family.”

It isn’t said with bitterness. He’s still smiling as he gazes out over the dark water, eyes gleaming under the waning moon. He looks perfectly at peace with the idea that he will never be loved back, and that heartbreak from a moment ago has nothing on what Moomin is feeling now.

It must show on his face, because Snufkin says, “Don’t trouble yourself over it, my dear. I’m a difficult creature to love, that’s all.”

Moomin reels back from him.

“How could you ever say such a thing?” Moomin demands, feeling stung. “How could you believe it?”

Snufkin stares up at Moomin as though he’s never seen him before, and their difference in size is somehow more apparent than it’s ever been.

But Moomin’s mouth runs off without him, eyes hot and heart racing.

“Every spring when you come back I think I’ve never been so happy before in my life, and every autumn when you leave again you take my heart with you, so don’t you _dare_ think that you’re not wonderful just because one person in the whole world is foolish enough not to see it! You’re not difficult! Loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done!”

The empty woods seem to ring after his outburst, the heavy silence laying over them like a thick bed of packing snow.

Snufkin doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t go away either, which means he’s going to say something when he figures it out. Words like to escape him sometimes, those pesky things, and Moomin has learned to be patient while Snufkin catches the right ones.

But right now Moomin is so— angry! Or _hurt_ , or— something else that makes breathing painful, like his lungs are full of sharp edges. And he thinks if he stays here for another second he’ll start yelling again, and Snufkin looks so small and startled that yelling at him any more is the last thing Moomin wants to do.

So he says, “I’m going back,” and starts off at a stomp. About halfway back to the party his anger deserts him, and by the time he finds Snorkmaiden he’s very near tears.

“Oh, no,” his friend says right away. Her face is full of sympathy. “I take it you didn’t get your dance.”

”I did something so stupid,” Moomin blurts. It’s almost a sob. Snorkmaiden’s hands come out as if to catch him. “Snufkin probably thinks I’m such a fool. He said something mistaken and I shouted at him and— “

God, the things he said! Moomin is still angry and hurt, but he’s ashamed and embarrassed, too. It’s not truly Snufkin that he was upset with, just the very wrong ideas that Snufkin had, and he handled it so poorly.

There are probably much better ways of convincing someone they’re loved than by yelling at them and carrying on. 

“Remember all those afternoons we spent planning my grand confession?” he asks of her glumly. “I didn’t do any of those plans justice tonight.”

“Poor Moomintroll,” Snorkmaiden sighs. “I promise you it’s not as bad as you think.”

Moomin wants to say of course it is! and I ruined everything! and Snufkin is probably going to leave months early now because of me! but that last thought is such a miserable one that Moomin can’t bring himself to say anything else at all.

Snorkmaiden spends the rest of the evening with him, even though there’s plenty of games and dancing she could be joining in on.As the party winds down, Sniff and Little My and Snork make their way over as well.

The last of the guests are leaving, and Papa rounds the kids together for help tidying the yard. Mama is stacking empty plates and bottles and Moomin is carrying a bag around for garbage when Sniff says, “Hey, look who’s come back! Just in time to help clean up.”

My says, “Good, now we don’t have to hunt him down later.”

Disbelieving, Moomin turns with hope and uncertainty thick in his throat. And yes, Snufkin is there, picking his way through the yard, face half-hidden in his hat and his scarf, looking two seconds from turning to bolt.

When he catches Moomin’s eye, he squares his shoulders. The last few steps between them seem very daring, and he sticks out a paw the second he’s close enough.

Moomin is a very confused mix of happy to see him and sad all at once, but it’s impossible not to take Snufkin’s hand when it’s offered. So he does, their fingers interlocking. The rest of their family feels far away.

“I’ve been awful,” Moomin tells him, ears laying flat.

“Of course you haven’t been,” Snufkin mumbles. “You’re a sweetheart.”

The two of them don’t really have to say “I’m sorry” and “I forgive you” so plainly anymore. Part of knowing someone so well is knowing what they mean to say no matter how they come out and say it.

Moomin’s heart begins to settle, Snufkin’s warm paw in his as good as any poultice.

“I don’t feel like one,” Moomin tells him, aching from someplace deeper than his bones. “I shouldn’t have shouted at you. If you didn’t know I loved you before, it was a sorry way to find out.”

Tail lashing, Snufkin stands there for what feels like a long time without speaking.

Snufkin rarely says very much all at once. When he was a child, he could talk for hours about his favorite things, but as the years came on, that happened less and less. By now it‘s a rarity to hear that stream of consciousness babble out of him like a brook. 

Sometimes when it’s just the two of them, laying in the field under a glorious patchwork of stars, Snufkin will slip back into that very young mumrik Moomin first met.

Or still sometimes, when it’s very important, he can muster up enough words to make himself understood.

“Of course I knew,” he says, careful and particular with every syllable. “You love everyone. I just didn’t know if yours matched mine. I didn’t know if I wanted it to or not.”

Moomin stopped breathing somewhere around “yours” and “mine,” electric with hope. He doesn’t dare interrupt, not even to tell his nosy siblings off for eavesdropping from the other side of the table they’re supposed to be cleaning.

“A commitment like that must cost something, I thought,” Snufkin tries to explain, brow furrowed. “But how long have I loved you, without it costing me anything at all?”

Oh!

Moomin’s face breaks in a wide smile, and he seizes Snufkin’s other hand, too. 

He’s known Snufkin’s love for him and his other friends in the valley since they were very small, since the years when they still hibernated together, but it’s nice to hear it said out loud.

“See there? You’re so easy to love, Snuf. We all love you, and I’m sure your secret swain does, too. Or if he doesn’t, then he will! And I’ll be happy for you, I swear it!”

Snufkin blinks at him. Somewhere behind them, someone mutters Moomin’s name like it’s a swear word. The noise of clean-up has stopped completely.

Moomin digests the full and heavy silence for a moment and then gasps so suddenly that Snufkin jumps.

“You don’t mean— it’s me?”

Snufkin looks as though he never wants to speak again, only existing in this space anymore because of Moomin’s tight grip on his paws that makes it impossible for him to run away. He’s hiding behind the brim of his hat, but Moomin can see how red his face is. Probably everyone in the yard can.

“Who else could it be, Moomintroll? The only place I come back to is here. Who else could I have fallen for without you knowing right away?”

“But me?” Moomin is laughing now, and crying, and deliriously relieved. “And you called it one-sided? How could you!”

Snufkin finally jerks into motion when Moomin’s tears start rolling, wiping them away with the end of his scarf and saying, “How was I to know it was the sweetheart sort of love you felt and not the sibling sort? One can’t just assume these things.”

Moomin spins him in a giddy circle. “Oh, but this is wonderful, isn’t it? Thank goodness we had that argument.”

“Never let it be said we do things the easy way,” Snufkin admits, strung along by him enough to smile. “I would have rather had that dance.”

A sudden noisy crackle has them both looking over, and Mama smiles tenderly at them from the table. She’s brought out the gramophone from the drawing room. A record is already spinning beneath the needle, and music begins to pour out over the yard.

“There’s always time for another dance,” she says wisely, reaching for Papa’s hand.

It’s the middle of the night and they only have the porch lights and a few lanterns and the stars to see by, and there’s still plenty to do before bed. But Snorkmaiden and her brother are laughing as they attempt to copy Mama and Papa’s waltz, and Sniff and Little My are twirling each other around energetically and bumping into chairs, and although it’s ridiculous, there’s absolutely no reason for Snufkin and Moomin not to join in. And that’s probably the point.

“We haven’t danced in ages,” Moomin says eagerly. “Since the last party, you remember?”

“A month ago,” Snufkin supplies, eyes catching the low light. He’s very warm, and solid in Moomin’s hands, and perhaps the most familiar thing to him in the whole world.

“ _Ages_ ,” Moomin insists.

Snufkin finally gives in with a laugh. “It does feel that way, doesn’t it?”

So they dance until the stars wink out and pale dawn touches the farthest corner of the sky. Then they part in the early morning with a shy kiss, Snufkin fleeing to his tent and Moomin to his bedroom, and greet each other the same way when everyone drags themselves groggily to the lunch table. 

And when late autumn comes around, Snufkin will linger a day or two longer than usual, but he’ll leave for his travels with a light step and a song in his heart. And Moomin will smile to see him go, knowing how sweet the spring will be.

And nothing changes that shouldn’t change. And everything changes that should.


End file.
